Director's Statement

Morris and Oswald is a film about New York. It examines the spirit of Manhattan life, not for the elite few but for the discarded many. The film follows two friends who have made their home in the Park. It focuses on the forgotten members of society, and their exaggerated efforts to find food.

A significant theme of the film is the concept of “home” to those who don’t have one. Can a homeless person ever find solace in the streets, or a park, and attain the feeling of home? The film focuses on this theme, as Oswald and the boy help Morris cope with abandonment. In the end the trio find a home together, though it is nothing more than a group of cardboard boxes and the salty taste of success.

The hot dog and the pretzel -- symbols of New York street life -- represent what I love about living here. I spend more time on sidewalks and park paths than indoors, more time walking -- regardless of the weather -- than driving. As New Yorkers we live our lives on the streets, but too many of us are forced by poverty to make a home there. Morris and Oswald intrigue me because they pay almost no heed to this unfortunate predicament. They have only hunger to satisfy, seeing nothing strange about their crayon-on-cardboard homestead. Having lived in the park since childhood, having never left, the pair regard those who retire to fancy Fifth Avenue apartments as the strange ones.

Living in New York demands a constant observation of those of the streets: they are ragged, hungry, and begging for help. Faced with the reality of this; of young mothers with starving children and of elderly war veterans, paralyzed and abandoned, I want them all to find a home.

Morris and Oswald is an imaginary world. The antithesis of present-day New York, it imagines a place in which the homeless are happy. Not weighed down by material possessions and the trivialities of a consumer life, here they don’t want for much. To our title characters, who know nothing more than the grass and the pavement of Central Park, a hot dog or a pretzel will do just fine.

Kelly Goeller; director